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Comment by user_named | Hacker News Reader

No, it's absolutely horrible. It means you think the person you're talking to is dumb and can be manipulated with this phrasing. They see through you.

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It's manipulative only if there really is no redeeming quality to their approach, which, in any realistic scenario there probably is.

I interpret this as, not that you should lie, you should just NOT focus 100% on the negative aspect. At the very least you can thank them for taking the time & effort to implement this solution & test it or w/e (I assume they did "some" work & put in some amount of well meaning effort).

If I can't genuinely find anything to praise about something I want to criticism, it's a sign that it's pretty bad (or I have a bad working relationship with this person) and that is a bigger, separate problem

It's not about phrasing, it's about being genuine and also choosing to have a certain perspective which builds the other person up. There's nothing to see through.

> it's about being genuine

I think this is an incredibly important lesson. Don't lie, _actually_ find something good to say. It's a goddamned super power, and it's also very good for your own mental health.

It’s out of context. Not all adults need or want other adults to ‘build them up’. If you start with some unrelated positive thing, it will be recognized as a manipulation technique because context tells us there’s no other reason to raise the point.

> If you start with some unrelated positive thing, it will be recognized as a manipulation technique because context tells us there’s no other reason to raise the point.

That's true, but nobody (that I saw) suggested saying things that don't fit the context.

> Not all adults need or want other adults to ‘build them up’.

Everyone wants respect and for people to be "on their side," and that's what we're talking about here. If someone doesn't care about your opinion, they won't mind you treating them respectfully, but if someone does care, then they'll mind when you don't. So why not just treat everyone respectfully?

Don't be seen through then. Actually appreciate your co-workers and see the good qualities in them.

Some of y'all are really overthinking the example. If you ever said:

>very fast solution, but you missed this edge case

It's the exact same format. I can praise the performance while also acknowledging that there may be some correctness issues (hopefully not such a nasty edge case performance falls off the cliff, but it happens).

I think you have a really good point here - but have you thought about being a little less abrasive in your phrasing? It can help your point gain acceptance.

This thread is a perfect example of OPs suggestion and why it works.

I think it's sarcasm or a joke, because there are two replies I've seen phrased like "I think [praise] but [suggestion]".

Here's another. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37342414

This comes off as passive aggressive. I would avoid this kind of phrasing, unless your goal is to needle people while maintaining plausible deniability.

A better way to describe it.

Have you ever brought in a new engineer; and their first pull request gets a dozen or more 'Change this' 'this won't handle X'?

Watch an NCGs face as the avalanche of (mostly minor, but still 'you did X wrong') PR comments come in.

But if you're the reviewer - be sure to comment on nifty things in the code also. Call out that neat usage of struct as a switch or the context manager, or even praise base understanding of the problem flow.

Mixing praise in with the (hopefully constructive) criticism can go a loooong way toward building a healthy team environment. And - Suprise! - you'll find you actually get invited to that beer lunch instead of always being bitched about at it.

Not dumb. Human. It’s rare to come across someone who, after hearing by anything vaguely negative about them, is listening attentively to what comes next. Not saying that such people don’t exist. I can count the ones I came across in my 44 years of life on two fingers.

This includes people who directly said that they want to hear things in a straightforward fashion. This includes me, who also likes to hear things in a straightforward fashion. We’re wired in a way that we don’t even notice.

You are spot on about lying and intentional manipulation. It's a horrible way to be.

However. that's not what they said. They said "find something you genuinely like about an approach." It means you're smart enough to find the aspects that are worth reinforcing in the face of something that you find problematic. You can't just do it as a checkbox. You have to genuinely and authentically recognize the positive.

It's not intended to be manipulative or lying, it's meant as shorthand for saying:

"I've reviewed your work and I have feedback. To begin, I genuinely find X and Y facets of your work to be good and well done. I am here to praise you for that work. I also found P and Q to be deficient in ways A and B; unless there are additional factors I do not understand, I recommend making changes G and K to areas P and Q."

But that's a lot of words framed very stiffly, and despite being framed extremely flatly, may still be received poorly. Hence why folks go for the much shorter and less formal "I really liked X and Y, have you thought about approaching P and Q with technique G and K?"

It's very different talking to strangers on the internet via text versus a coworker in person or video call.

As others have said, the person will know if you are being genuine or not. Which is the real core point; not the particular phrasing you use.

Are you 100% right every single time? The problem with not using simple communication niceties is that you not only put the other person on defensive, you put yourself on defensive when your opinions on the approach end up wrong.

Yes, there are clear times when some work doesn't meet standard and it's important to be very straight forward. But, most of the time we're dealing in shades of grey with different tradeoffs.

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